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Biden and Trump may forget names, but here's what really matters in assessing whether they’re cognitively up for the job
By Leo Gugerty CLEMSON, South Carolina©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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dagon
Duopoly problems.
Bernie Sanders being sharper than both candidates combined shows it is not only an age related issue.
As Andrew Yang and others have stated, the US not having ranked choice voting is leading to dysfunction.
It is also why we have gerrymandered in mobs of cretins like the Freedom Caucus.
Bob Fosse
“He claims that he can make intuitive decisions in a field where he lacks knowledge by using “common sense” and still be more accurate than knowledgeable experts”
Clearly. If 45 doesn’t get elected you will be have to choose between being electrocuted by a boat or eaten by sharks. ‘The Dems’ haven’t even made a single statement on the issue.
Peter Neil
two sad candidates with a dysfunctional congress and corrupt supreme court.
all great civilizations have collapsed.
Alfie Noakes
Both are pro-genocide imperialists, supporters of the endless for-profit wars waged by the US around the world. Trump is a common criminal, both are corrupt. What an utter horrorshow US politics has become...
Geeter Mckluskie
"Both are pro-genocide imperialists, supporters of the endless for-profit wars waged by the US around the world."
This claim doesn't pass the litmus test regarding Trump's record on military intervention
Moonraker
I think this is probably the most underestimated trait in the world today. It is inversely related to cultural conservatism, authoritarianism, prejudice and social dominance orientation (believing some groups should be above others).
Of course, it depends on where they start from, how open-minded they become. But it is clear we need more education in this world.
Gene Hennigh
Us olde people can do what we did wene we were young. Mayb I don't rember much about wine I was young but I can still do it. And think? Boy, can I thing! Even better now. Leaf these guys along. Both are fine thingkers, like mee.
Susan Elizabeth-Marsh Tanabe
Excellent article. Vital conclusion with supporting statements by a qualified author.
itsonlyrocknroll
Could the real Joe Biden, Donald Trump stand up, before November Election.
The charlatan, the incumbent supposed loss of cognitive functioning, the agitator, the alleged perpetrator of insurrection/rebellion, or the abuser of the US justice system to politically imprison, remove a his nemesis from the democratic process?
Who is really pulling the strings, the behind the scenes pollical puppetry?
A conspiracy theory in the making, or potentially a future fact?
Ken
I mean personally I think there should be an age limit of 70 and if someone is still capable at an age above 70 there are other high positions they can do effectively. Being president is more than being in charge, taking a note from the dictators, you have to always appear as fit and capable, can't show any bad signs in health and can't make too many mistakes when giving speeches or briefs
Peter Neil
who is pulling the strings?
the owners of the country, as the late, great george carlin said.
itsonlyrocknroll
This US 2024 election cannot be understated, two wars, both in danger of spiralling out of control.
A pandemic that the economic, fiscal, monetary after-effects have yet to be fully realised.
A global cost of living crisis.
The next President of the US will be pivotal to global, he must have his head on the right way up.
At the same time a leader, not an isolationist.
Donald trump must offer a whole lot more than making America great again.
I have always believed America is great in the first place.
I don't need to be reminded.
Joe Biden has cognitively issues. Sometimes on display.
Another four years? One has to question that logic, rightly so.
I wonder who will actually be pulling the strings?
Accountability to US people.
Quo Primum
He's also been criticized, and legitimately so, for deliberately lying about his personal past.
Ken
@Quo Primum
And Trump has done the same as well
rcch
Intuitive vs. deliberative decision-making
There are two types of decision-making: intuitive and deliberative.
In intuitive decision-making, people quickly and easily recognize a complex situation and recall an effective solution from memory. For example, physicians’ knowledge of how diseases and symptoms are causally related allows them to quickly recognize a complex set of patient symptoms as matching a familiar disease stored in memory and then recall effective treatments.
A large body of research on fields from medicine to military leadership shows that it takes years – and often decades – of effortful deliberate practice in one’s field to build up the knowledge that allows effective intuitive decisions.
In contrast to the ease and speed of intuitive decisions, the most complex decisions – often the kinds that confront a president – require conscious deliberation and mental effort at each stage of the decision-making process. These are the hallmarks of deliberative decision-making.
For example, a deliberative approach to creating an immigration bill might start with causal reasoning to understand the multiple factors influencing the current border surge and the positive and negative effects of immigration. Next, generating possible bills may involve negotiating among multiple groups of decision-makers and stakeholders who have divergent values and objectives, such as reducing the number of undocumented immigrants but also treating them humanely. Finally, making a choice requires forecasting how proposed solutions will affect each objective, dealing with value trade-offs and often further negotiation.
Psychological scientists who study these topics agree that people need three key thinking dispositions – referred to as “ actively open-minded thinking” or “wise reasoning” – for effective deliberative decision-making:
Open-mindedness: Being open-minded means considering all of the choices and objectives relevant to a decision, even if they conflict with one’s own beliefs.
Calibrated confidence: This is the ability to express confidence in a given forecast or choice in terms of probabilities rather than as certainties. One should have high confidence only if evidence has been weighted based on its credibility and supportive evidence outweighs opposing evidence by a large margin.
Teamwork: This involves seeking alternative perspectives from within one’s own advisory team and from stakeholders with conflicting interests.
Presidents need to use both intuitive and deliberative decision-making. The ability to make smaller decisions effectively using intuitive decision-making frees up time to concentrate on larger ones. However, the decisions that make or break a president are exceedingly complex and highly consequential, such as how to handle climate change or international conflicts. Here is where deliberative decision-making is most needed.
Effective intuitive and deliberative decisions both rely on extensive job-related knowledge. Especially during deliberative decision-making, people use conceptual knowledge of the world that is consciously accessible, commonly referred to as semantic memory. Knowledge of concepts such as tariffs, Middle East history and diplomatic strategies allows presidents to quickly grasp new developments and understand their nuances. It also helps them fulfill an important job requirement: explaining their decisions to political opponents and the public.
What to make of forgetfulness and word mix-ups
Biden has been criticized for not recalling details of his personal past. This is an error in episodic memory, which is responsible for our ability to consciously recollect personal experiences.
Neurologists agree, however, that Biden’s episodic memory errors are within the range of normal healthy aging and that the details of one’s personal life are not especially relevant to a president’s job. That’s because episodic memory is distinct from the semantic memories and intuitive knowledge that are critical to good decision-making.
Mixing up names, as Biden and Trump occasionally do, is also unlikely to affect job performance. Rather, it simply involves a momentary error in retrieving information from semantic memory. When people make this common error, they usually still understand the concepts underlying the mixed up names, so the semantic knowledge that helps them deal with life and work is intact.
Making complex decisions as you age
Because all of us use a myriad of concepts to navigate the world every day, our semantic knowledge typically does not decrease with age, lasting at least until age 90. This knowledge is stored in posterior brain regions that deteriorate relatively slowly with age.
Research shows that, since intuitive decision-making is learned by extensive practice, older experts are able to maintain high performance in their field as long as they keep using and practicing their skills. As with semantic memory, experts’ intuitive decision-making is controlled by posterior brain regions that are less compromised by aging.
However, older experts must put in more practice than younger ones to maintain previous skill levels.
The thinking dispositions that are key to deliberative decision-making are influenced by early social learning, including education. Thus, they become habits, stable characteristics that capture how people typically make decisions.
Evidence is emerging that dispositions such as open-mindedness do not decline much and sometimes even increase with age. To investigate this, I looked at how well open-mindedness correlated with age, while controlling for education level, using data from 5,700 people in the 2016 British Election Study. A statistical analysis showed that individuals ages 26 to 88 had very similar levels of open-mindedness, while those with more education were more open-minded.
Applying this to the candidates
As for the 2024 presidential candidates, Biden has extensive knowledge and experience in politics from more than 44 years in political office and thoroughly investigates and discusses diverse viewpoints with his advisers before reaching a decision.
In contrast, Trump has considerably less experience in politics. He claims that he can make intuitive decisions in a field where he lacks knowledge by using “common sense” and still be more accurate than knowledgeable experts. This claim contradicts the research showing that extensive job-specific experience and knowledge is necessary for intuitive decisions to be consistently effective.
My overall interpretation from everything I’ve read about this is that both candidates show aspects of good and poor decision-making. However, I believe Biden regularly displays the deliberative dispositions that characterize good decision-making, while Trump does this less often.
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Interesting, Dr. Gugerty, you seem to be implying that the only reason why people wouldn’t vote for Biden is because of his cognitive decline. Hmm. Well, I’m here to say that even if he was the healthiest man in the world, it would be a (big) mistake to keep him in office for four more years.
Also, given the fact that he’s aging faster than Trump, I’d like to ask: will he be alive in 2028?
nishikat
One is a criminal and one isn't.
Sven Asai
The weakest become king, for that all lower charges can do what they want and cash in. History is full of this pattern. And nowadays nothing is different, the weakest and rather low supported are on the very top, Macron in France, Scholz in Germany, or those two seniles discussed here.
nishikat
One is a felon. And this same person declared a rapist by a court.
TaiwanIsNotChina
And yet zero illegal invasions by the US going on atm.
JJE
Unless you count the invasion/occupation of Syria, the nasty business in Gaza, their ally involved in that who also annexed parts of Syria, the bombing of Yemen, and Somalia, to name a few non UN-mandated activities.
Net "zero"...
wallace
Is it 27 countries invaded by Russia?
JJE
No.
ian
Whoever is elected is okay, they're both good representative of the US.
rcch
nishikatToday 02:35 pm JST “ One is a criminal and one isn't. “
One is being politically persecuted and the other isn’t.
funkymofo
rcch
Did you just repost an entire article just so that you could have a fake argument with the author?
Anonymous
This article paid for by BIDEN 2024.
(satire)
Biden’s Afghan pullout fiasco comes to mind. His 40-year+ experience didn’t do him much good. That was “good decision-making”?
bass4funk
Prime, it would seem, I don’t think Biden will make it to the end of this year, he just doesn’t seem that he can politically hold it together anymore. And he definitely cannot do four years under any circumstances, and that’s just not going to happen.
No, not even close and definitely not when it comes to finances. I wouldn’t let that Socialist anywhere near a bank.
We do, Yang is that typical wealthy liberal that wants to tax you into oblivion, but wants to make as much money for himself as possible, I don’t begrudge the guy, but as usual liberals don’t understand how math works in the ideas that they have for society, the bankrupt the country, we’re already heading in that direction, because no one wants to talk about the national debt, both parties, but especially Democrats could care less about the debt, because most of them live like fat rats, and in places where poor people could never go, so why would they care? They want power, they want to control you, they want to control what you spend, how you spend it, but whether you’re struggling in life and living paycheck to paycheck, these people could care less.
Both sides do this, and in California the Democrats are especially notorious for doing it. This is one reason why they were able to take over the entire state.
TaiwanIsNotChina
But Biden and his family can handle it.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Yeah, I mean if he was all there he would have turned around that war of 20 years under four administrations.
nishikat
How exactly does this work?
kurisupisu
Maybe Leo Gugerty can explain why Biden can’t focus on anything for more than a minute and why he keeps walking off when he should be standing still?
Pukey2
The sight of Biden at the G7 meeting was plain embarrassing. Not knowing whether to stand or sit, looking the other way compared to everyone else, walking off (or being dragged away by the wife) when the going gets tough, slurring words, looking around as if you don't know where you are or what is happening. The guy needs to be looked after in a nursing home. Surely the elites could have found a more alert puppet.
Pukey2
Anyone who doesn't like the American regime will be praying that Biden gets another years. It'll be like dropping a heavy rock on one's foot again.
Pukey2
type: another 4 years